OILOHOLICS: BREAKING THE HABIT

WILL OIL CONTINUE TO DOMINATE THE WORLD ENERGY?

There is wide consensus that fossil fuels will probably dominate the world energy mix until at least 2040, due to the lack of cheap, practical alternatives.

PROBLEM AREAS

China is still building two coal power plants a week. In both India and China, air pollution and congestion in the biggest cities are already appalling, which will limit the scope for a richer population to buy ever more cars.

India still relies on coal for 58% of its primary energy needs. It hopes to reduce its dependence on oil (28% of the mix) by 10% by 2022, and plans to double the share of natural gas from 7% to 15%

OIL AND WAR

The Muslim world has become polarized into Sunni and Shia and it is fighting international Su-Shi Civil War. Minority Shia, which is only 10% of the Muslim world, are poking the other 90% Sunni in the eye with a stick. Over 95% of terror victims are Muslims. Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, and South Sudan are hot new battle zones due in large part to their oil wealth.

Fracking is the most powerful weapon for geopolitical change in the past decade. It has bankrupted Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Brazil and the Arab World forcing deep political change and near revolution. Today terrorists are starved by the low price of oil–they cannot do their big plans. Weapons and training cost a lot of money.

MOST WORLD GOVERNMENTS

The US is importing half of its oil currently and it will only be the world’s largest producer of oil in a few years and Canada has oil reserves larger than Saudi Arabia.

Political pressure to “keep it in the ground” only works in developed western societies. Yet even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau commented that he knew no country that would allow its oil reserves in the ground to remain untouched.

Governments do not have the political will to implement their climate goals at anything like the speed the Paris agreement envisages. Fossil fuels are a major revenue earner for many governments, usually in the form of excise or hydrocarbons taxes.

FACTS ARE FACTS

Around 18 scientific organizations are telling us that global warming is real because of human cause. These include the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, and the American Chemical Society, to name just a few. These are not slouch organizations. http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

The CO2 varied from 180-280 ppm in past 400,000 years. A century later, in 1958, it was near 320 ppm. By next 40 years (1990’s) it breached 360 ppm. Next it took mere 20 years (2010’s) to shoot past 400 ppm.

The rate of warming in 1910-1940 was 1.3 C per century. Before 1940, the warming was mainly due to increase solar activities and low volcanic activities. The rate of warming in 1975-2005 was 1.8 C per century.

The rapid rise of CO2 in past 150 years coincides with start of industrial revolution and correlated with the increase frequency of extreme weather events. The CO2 increase is also correlated with increase of ocean acidification by 30% since industrial revolution.

Records taken since 1880 shows the top 15 warmest year recorded between 1880 – 2015 all occurred in the past two decades. Last year was the warmest. 2016 is on the way to become the warmest year after a full year data has been taken. Rising temperature has been correlated with shrinking ice coverage in glaciers.

Why an issue? The CO2 is a heat trapping greenhouse gas.

PASCAL’S BET: If you are wrong???

The gist of the New Pascal Wager is that, one cannot be absolutely certain about global warming, so the wise thing to do is to live your life so as to help the world lower its carbon footprint: such a life has everything to gain and nothing to lose. (This is the reason for buying fire insurance: we don’t know if we will have a fire!)

If we live as though the global warming problem exists, and indeed it does exist, we have acted wisely to work for a better world. (Our fire insurance bought us a new home!) If it doesn’t exist, we have lost nothing.

If, on the other hand, we live as though the global warming problem doesn’t exist and it really does exist, we have gained a terrible world for our grandchildren. (We had a fire and we have no fire insurance!)

If one weighs the options, clearly the rational choice is to deal with the global warming problem, which must be solved. This is the better of the two possible choices. (So buy fire insurance!)

Clearly, higher temperatures will melt the polar ice caps and sea levels will rise, so we would rather keep the globe as it stands today instead of deal with the natural or unnatural temperature increases.

DEMAND CRISIS

Although some regions may see a boom in investment, it would be short-lived, because long-term demand is falling and the market could quickly become oversupplied. The only way to go is to reduce energy demand in all forms. Energy efficiency should be the primary goal of most energy related policy and initiatives.

Global demand for oil may peak within the next 10-15 years because of slow global growth and the large-scale introduction of electric vehicles powered by renewable energy.

In the most extreme scenarios, experts say that if there is to be a 50/50 chance of keeping global warming below 2º C, only 35% of proven fossil-fuel reserves (mostly coal and oil) can be burned. If the target limit is to be 1.5º C, only 10% of the proven reserves can be used. Oil will be outmoded long before the world’s oil wells run dry.

DESIRE

Electrical cars are short ranged vehicles which is their Achilles heel. Electric Vehicle’s (EV’s) work best in urban areas, where space is rare & is high cost.

It takes 3-5 minutes, and 15 square meters to fill a petrol car for 300-600 miles of driving. It takes 40-110 minutes and 15 square meters to charge an EV for same range. EV’s do not have technical and social forces in their favor for refueling. EV’s do not have this fueling/driving ecosystem in place, so no one knows its real impacts.

Only when entrepreneurs can capture the public’s imagination with new vehicles that transform the whole travel experience, rather than just change the fuel, will the petrol engine run out of road.

OIL COMPANY DILEMMA

If measures to stop global warming are fully implemented, oil-company revenues could fall by more than $22 trillion (that’s $22,000 billion) over the next 25 years.

The oil companies have huge balance-sheets and make commensurately large capital investments, but in the short term it is hard to see renewables reaching sufficient scale to become important parts of their business. They would also have to get involved with their consumers, which is not something this engineering-minded industry could get excited about.

Oil companies, for their part, will have to explore new lines of business. Not all oil companies want to be innovators. Many plan to develop more gas. . Yet from a pollution perspective, natural gas is not much better than other petroleum products and coal.

DIVERSIFICATION

Some companies are taking out options on renewable technologies, in case they grow very quickly. Sovereign-wealth funds such as Norway’s redirect the substantial cash flows from oil into lower-carbon technologies. When the nature of the energy transition becomes clearer, these companies say they may have to invest tens of billions of dollars to develop new energy businesses.

The Saudi government hopes to pursue a similar diversification strategy via an initial public offering of part of Saudi Aramco. Some of the proceeds, estimated at up to $150 billion, will be put into a massive sovereign-wealth fund that will invest in technologies beyond oil.

More than 500 investment firms, with assets of $3.4 trillion (that’s $34,000 billion) under management, have pledged to divest from fossil-fuel companies. It says that when financial fiduciaries decide where to invest, they should now consider the climate impact as well as the likely returns. It’s like getting out of the theater when you smell smoke.

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Rich countries, on average, consume 10-25 barrels per person per year, compared with 1-3 barrels per person in poorer countries. It is predicted that the global vehicle fleet will double from 1 billion to 2 billion over the next 25 years, mostly thanks to rising income per person in developing countries, which is expected roughly to offset the drop in demand for petrol in the West.

All 6 billion of the Rest of World are craving improvements in living, all of which will require large amounts of physical transformation…and energy use.

There is a small reprieve: in the developing world where 95% of the people have a mobile phone but perhaps 5% have a car – entire industries of music, education, and related are done on line.

WIND AND SOLAR

Solar and wind are cute in small batches. Wind and solar can generate at perhaps 20 – 30% of their rated capacity, unpredictably. Solar and wind are by no means miracle cures.

For a reliable 24 hour supply of 1000 MW from 1000 MW of wind and solar capacity, you will need to have 1000 MW of gas, coal, hydro or nuclear capacity on standby for times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow – which does happen.

The current Anglo-Euro fantasy for energy efficiency (wind and solar) will work to an extent, but requires so much land use, that it is impractical at scale in the population density of Asia (passive solar and geothermal is different). The daily and seasonal pulsing of solar and wind will require massive storage facilities.

The strategic question is: How much energy does each fuel system produce and deliver per unit of geographic space it consumes on the surface of planet Earth?

BATTERIES

They calculate that at a battery’s current price of around $325 per kilowatt hour (kWh), oil prices would need to be above $350 a barrel for EVs to be cost-competitive in 2020. Even if they were to fall to the DoE’s target of $125 per kWh, they would still need an oil price of $115 a barrel to break even.

Next year Tesla aims to bring out its more affordable Model 3. It hopes that the cost of the batteries mass-produced at its new Gigafactory in Nevada will come down to below $100 per kWh by 2020 (see chart), and that they will offer a range of 215 miles (350km) on a single charge.

And what is going to happen with the hundreds of millions of batteries discarded? Does recycling really save something here? Instead of emission we’ll have mountains of dead batteries.

More importantly lithium is limited resources. It will drain sooner than later. There is no lithium for everyone. Hydrogen is the future.

THE BATTLE OF THE SUBSIDIES!

Wind, solar, and nuclear power require subsidies to continue to exist, much less to expand.

In the United States, the federal government has paid US$74 billion for energy subsidies to support R&D for nuclear power ($50 billion) and fossil fuels ($24 billion) from 1973 to 2003. During this same time frame, renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency received a total of US$26 billion. The green-power companies have received more than $4-billion (U.S.) to build wind farms.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), estimated that Canada is subsidizing the fossil fuel industry by $25 billion a year. The Nuclear Waste Management Organizations estimates that taxpayers will on the hook for the $25 billion needed to construct and maintain a nuclear waste repository, likely to be located in Northern Ontario.

Do you see the problem? There is a minuscule subsidy budget for low head hydro projects.

We pause now for a small commercial:

We introduce a huge innovation, called the HUG. It promises to deliver a combination of irrigation and electricity in remote areas of the underdeveloped world using the kinetic power of moving water without the use of dams. All we need is flowing water: a river, waterfall, stream, tide or run of river.

Imagine the effect this new carbon-free innovation would have on the environment and poverty: the elimination of expensive dams. How is this possible?

The HUGis simple to manufacture and maintain and it requires no elaborate electrical control systems. Maintenance is important: the main electrical generator is kept dry because it is located outside the flowing water (water and electricity don’t mix)– not like other damless kinetic systems.

Yes, simple: the water level is modulated by a control valve and it is always filled to the top of a Funnel HUG. This means that the rotation of the turbine is always steady. An electric generator is designed for this fixed rotation for a predetermined voltage and frequency. – no expensive inverters or converters.

Could this be the solution to RENEWABLE ENERGY investment?

HUG WAVE ENERGY

The HUG captures electricity from wave energy from a 8 meters (25 foot) slab wave, that rises from a trough, which is dug all along the front of an artificially-built reef and a road worthy surrounding dike to be built as a barrier up to and including the shore at a height of one to two meters (6 feet) short of the highest slab wave. High pressure water is sent to shore to energize an electric turbine.

THE WATERFALL HUG

A Waterfall HUG is fed by water from a waterfall through a trough into an array of Funnel HUGs that engages an electric generator, in order to create electricity and to provide a head of water for irrigation purposes.

THE PORTABLEHUG

The Portable HUGis designed for a river or rapids for camping, motor homes to construction sites. This is not an emergency back-up power for a short run time using a set of batteries to power a small Pelton turbine, which in turn activates an electrical generator. It activates an electric generator from the kinetic energy of flowing water, 24/7, which can charge batteries or electric cars at night.

THE HUG

Once the generator is running, you can use it to power small appliances, computers, TVs, vacuum cleaners, and most electrical equipments that don’t consume too much electricity.

HUG the WATER TOWERS

Demand for electricity on warmer climates peaks at 4-8 PM in the summer, when solar panels are going to sleep, guest. In colder climates, peak demand is in the winter, in early morning and late evening. Peak demand is GROWING every year, requiring power companies to install expensive “peaker” power generation.

TheHUG can use 100,000 available water towers as energy storage system. Water towers are already present abundantly throughout the world: the main objective would be to connect these water towers to a Funnel HUG, not only for the supply of water to municipal purpose, but also for storing electricity so that more electricity can become available during prime time. Only part of water is extracting from tank to generate electricity to be refilled at night and the rest will be used for supplying water for municipal purpose. Alternatively, a typical pumped hydro project would cost about $1000 per kWh to run at a cost of $3 billion.

Only part of water is extracting from tank to generate electricity and half will be used for supplying water for municipal purpose which means only half volume is using for storing energy. The actual cost of the energy potential for single water tower is $70 per kWh by using a helical turbine at the bottom of the water tower, which can generate electricity efficiently.

HUG the DECOMMISSION DAMS

The HUG Energy System provides an inexpensive method of extracting low head energy from non-powered dam and decommissioned dams.

In order to revive old decommissioned dams, it is important to overcome the usual buildup of silt behind the dam after 25 to 50 years of use. One solution to reviving the dam is to bypass the turbines of the dam completely and allow the flow to pour over the dam into a Funnel HUG, which activates the electric generator.

By 2020, over 70% of US dams will be 50 years or older and in need of repair, replacement or removal. In addition, there are over 49,000 low-head, non-powered dams in the U.S. suitable for hydro power.

WHAT IS THE SECRET OF THEHUG?

We have developed the proprietaryHUG, based on the physics of the vortex, which will revolutionize hydroelectric energy. This new damless development of a submerged helical pathway is capable of extracting hydro-electric power from rivers, rapids, waterfalls, non-power dams and wave energy at a low cost.

This innovation also providesirrigationusing large dimension submersible pumps, which operate entirely from the kinetic energy of the flowing river: no diesel oil and no electricity needed to power the large irrigation pumps.

CARBON DIOXIDE STORAGE unsolved

Back in Norway, Statoil also operates two projects to store carbon dioxide under water, in some of the most advanced examples of a technology seen as key to removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere: carbon capture and storage (CCS). This is costly and still in its infancy, and governments have supported it only erratically. In 2015 a mere 28 million tonnes of CO2 was stored that way. To help meet the 2ºC limit, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says the world needs to store a whopping 4 billion tonnes a year by 2040.

HELPING SOLVE THE WORLD’S CARBON POLLUTION

New Trees are the only solution to soaking up Carbon Dioxide:

Our Mission: to help solve the problem of carbon dioxide build up in the world by growing and managing mature forests of foliage, fruit and nut trees that eventually are used in lumber — not firewood. The Carbon Tax Fund supports a Micro finance initiative to support women farmers and their families who will nurture fruit and nut trees over their lifetime. The Net Present Value of each tree is $0.49/tree plus $1.00/tree for auditing and maintenance for 25 years.

A Full Scale Aquaponic Tree Nursery in Africa supported by OTHER IMPORTANT LINKS